Friday, 20 November 2015

Friday is Rock'n'Roll London Day: Sex Pistols-on-Thames

Elsewhere in
Rock'n'Roll London…

The building project
for South Bank Tower (pictured below) already looms over the Thames in the borough of Southwark
– 11 additional storeys are being added to the fundamental structure (the
former King's Reach Tower, designed by Richard Seifert and dating from 1972)
and a complete redesign of the exterior has taken place.

In 1977, at the height
of Punk, this location was the unlikely HQ of the NME, Britain's famous weekly
music newspaper.

The paper was moved
here from offices in Long Acre by parent company IPC, partly in an attempt to
curb the outre behaviour and excesses of the music journalists, a team that
included some of the most fabled names in music writing – Nick Kent, Julie
Burchill and Charles Shaar Murray among them.

Such characters were
always going to stand out when surrounded by the staff of such dowdy sister
titles as Horse & Hound and TV Times.

Murray is quoted in
Pat Long's excellent History of
the NME – High Times & Low Lives at the World's Most Famous Music Magazine:

"One of the many
reasons that we hated being moved to King's Reach Tower was that it made it
harder for Lemmy [Motorhead founder, writer, bassist & singer] to come
round and sell us our speed."

The 25th floor office
of the NME afforded clear views right out across London and was a safe vantage
point for the Sex Pistols infamous Jubilee cruise in 1977 – the band performed
live on a boat, the pointedly named – the Queen Elizabeth. The party was
infamously broken up by the police at Charing Cross Pier.

Not that any
self-respecting NME hack wanted a safe vantage point

Reporting for the NME
Tony Parsons wrote…

"A cop smiled and
punched me in the chest," reported Tony Parsons for the NME, "There
was a sadistic glee in the way they went about their business."

Here's some footage of
the infamous event…

And here's a second
cameo from the much-missed Lemmy, giving his version of the Pistols' God Save The Queen atop a
double-decker London bus…

The Rock'n'Roll London Walk meets today at Tottenham Court Road Station 2pm.POST UPDATED 16/3/16A
London Walk costs £10 – £8 concession. To join a London Walk, simply meet your
guide at the designated tube station at the appointed time. Details of all
London Walks can be found at www.walks.com.